Simon the Righteous was one of the last members of the Great Assembly. He was wont to say: The world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the Ritual, and on Acts of Kindness.
There are still many messages that you have sent me that are outstanding. Now that we have resumed our shiurim after the Pesaĥ break I would like to relate to the issues raised before we continue on to the next mishnah.
In a previous shiur we mentioned the rationale of Rambam concerning the sacrificial cult. Here, Jacob Chinitz relates to this:
What is remarkable, is, that with all his historicism, Maimonides did not draw the implication of his rationalization of sacrifices to the point of omitting them from his scheme of Jewish law. In his code, he includes all the elaborate Halakhah of Korbanot, Beit Habechirah, and in reference to Yom Kippur, all the technicalities of what constitutes fasting or the violation of the command to fast. What is also puzzling is how the Sages managed to actually claim that the altar in a man's home is his table, and that prayer subtitutes for sacrifice, and even see advantages of the exilic form of worship as superior to the Temple worship, and that Chakham Adif Minavi ['rabbis are greater than prophets' – when it comes to deciding halakhah – SR], and yet they kept all the legalities in all these areas: Sacrifice, Fasting, and Prophecy. The ideal for future Judaism, both in Talmud and in Maimonides, is still the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinstitution of Sacrifice.
I respond:
I think that Rambam – like many traditional scholars today – was an 'intellectual schizophrenic'. When he was wearing the philosopher's hat he passionately held one view, but when he was articulating halakhah he was dutifully traditional. His code, Mishneh Torah, is encyclopedic, including laws that will apply only in "the messianic age". I think that where The Guide for the Perplexed and Mishneh Torah seem to differ, most scholars today would see in the Guide Rambam's true view.
Yehuda Wiesen writes, also on the matter of sacrifice:
While we are trying to understand the meaning of the sacrifices to our ancestors, let me ask why there were no petitionary sacrifices similar to the petitionary prayers of today for health, success, well-being, and peace? (As least I do not know of any such sacrifices.) I find it difficult to understand a religion which lacks such petition.
I respond:
Surely, the shelamim were designed to fulfill the function that Yehuda mentions. The term shelamim is usually translated as "peace offerings" or "free-will offerings". These were sacrifices that individuals brought not because they were commanded to do so but because their heart prompted them to do so – either because of some great joy and gratitude or because of some great fear or sorrow. The first chapters of Vayikra are concerned with such offerings, and there a scale is introduced so that anybody can make an offering of shelamim regardless of his or her financial situation: the rich can afford an ox, the middle classes a sheep, poorer people a bird, and the indigent just some flour mixed with oil. But, even more salient to the point raised by Yehuda: we must never forget that sacrifice never replaced personal prayer and we can justifiably imagine that almost all shelamim were accompanied by a personal prayer of some kind or a meditation.
Noa Raz writes, also about Rambam and the sacrificial cult, but from a different angle:
You relate to Rambam's explanation which would lead, ultimately, to vegetarianism and the prohibition of ritual slaughter, and that the need for sacrifice is a need that stems from a social structure (because this is what all peoples did). I wonder what this need might be that brings us to be "like the gentiles"? If, according to Rambam, it is clear that man is not supposed to kill animals, and if not only "the ascent of man" but also "the chosen people", why is this desire to be like all peoples and to accommodate ourselves socially greater than the moral injunction?
I respond:
That Rambam's view about the etiology of sacrifice in Judaism would lead ultimately to vegetarianism is not Rambam's, but the extrapolation of his thesis by modern rabbis and scholars. I am reasonably certain that Rambam ate meat! Be that as it may, we have here a misunderstanding of what Rambam was saying: according to his thesis sacrifice, while essentially to be deprecated, was permitted by the Torah not for social reasons but for emotional reasons. His claim is that at the time the whole world worshipped their deities through sacrifice and for that reason the Israelites would not have been capable of appreciating non-sacrificial worship. They had to be weaned from this gradually. The whole ethos of Judaism is that the Jewish people is not like other peoples: our ideal vocation – one which we constantly fail to realize – is to be "a light to the gentiles".
Elaine Handelman is also concerned with the sacrificial cult, but from yet another angle:
Since you have brought up the strong feeling Jews had to the Bet Mikdash and its ritual, I've often wondered and will now ask: After destruction of the Bet HaMikdash, why didn't our ancestors return to the status quo ante, sacrifice at local high places? I have read that sacrifice was becoming unfashionable all over the Middle East at that time, but I don't find that a very satisfying answer. The Chumash is full of instructions on sacrifice before the Temple. So why did we stop then?
I respond:
Once the Torah, as a complete unit, was accepted by the Jewish people as binding scripture (under Ezra and Nehemiah in the year 444 BCE) all the laws contained therein became binding – regardless of how modern scholarship would describe the geographical and historical provenance of each of the various strands that it comprises. The book of Deuteronomy [Deuteronomy 12:4-7, for example] makes it quite clear on many occasions that the "high places" must be abolished and that the sacrificial cult could be performed only in the Bet Mikdash in Jerusalem.
Once the Temple was no more the cult could not be practiced anywhere else. As to the suggestion that sacrifice was becoming unfashionable: I cannot accept this. The concept of the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice to this day lies at the heart of Christian belief and ritual practice. The Roman Catholic church, to this day, has as its central ritual "the sacrifice of the Mass" and adherents are required to believe that when they participate they are actually eating the very body of their saviour. This issue of transubstantiation was and is one of the defining differences between Catholicism and Protestantism.
More of your comments and queries next time.
I utilised the Pesaĥ break to update the Sanhedrin archive, to which I have now added the whole of Chapter 5. The archive can be accessed
via this link.
